Social phobia is one of the common subtypes of phobias.

Patients with social phobia have an excessive and irrational fear of an external object or situation. Patients are aware of their irrationality but are unable to control their nervousness, and the fear continues to recur.

Fear attacks are often accompanied by significant anxiety and autonomic symptoms, and the patient tries to avoid the object or situation that causes the fear or to suppress the fear to endure the pain, and life is affected.

Social phobia is one of the common subtypes of phobias.

Some people do not like any kind of gathering and feel very anxious and nervous whenever they are in a crowd.

If they meet someone they know on the road, they tend to put their heads down and play with their phones, pretending not to see, this kind of person is a typical social phobia. Even if he is already aware of his timidity, he can't do anything about it and can't control his nervousness when interacting with people.

Students will feel scared if they can't finish their homework because the teacher will check it tomorrow; employees will worry if they can't finish their tasks because they will have to give it to their bosses tomorrow.

People are social by nature, and as long as they live in society, they will be influenced by others, by other individuals, or by groups.

We are influenced when others are with us, and we are influenced by others when they are not in front of us. We are influenced when a person speaks, and we are influenced when he does not speak, even if he is standing there.

Based on a large number of observations and experiments, Ratner proposed the social force theory.

This law means that when some social sources act on a target individual, the amount of force (I: impact) experienced by the individual is a function of the product of the strength (S: strength), proximity (I: immediacy) and number (N: number) of these sources (multiplicative function), that is I (Impact) = f (SIN)).

In the above formula, intensity (S) refers to the salience (salience), power (power), importance (importance) or strength (intensity) of the source of action, which often depends on the identity, age, socio-economic status or dominance of the source of action about the target and its role in influencing the target in the future, etc.

Proximity (I) refers to the temporal or spatial proximity of the two actors, or the presence or absence of barriers or filters between them, and number (N) refers to the number of actors.

When we gather, because of the large number of people, the atmosphere is lively, interpersonal space is relatively small, so for some people who are not good at socializing, and the relationship with the crowd is not familiar, the pressure they feel is several times the average person, not to mention those who themselves suffer from social fear.

Therefore these people do not need to panic, should take as deep a breath as possible to calm their emotions.

In addition to social forces that can explain social fear, genetic factors may also be a cause. Studies have shown that phobias tend to run in families, with female relatives showing a particularly pronounced pattern.

The results of bipolar studies suggest that square fear may be genetically linked and that there is a link to panic disorder.

Some specific phobias have a clear genetic predisposition, such as blood and injection phobias, with approximately 2/3 of the biological relatives of prior evidence suffering from the same disorder.

Such patients also respond differently to frightening stimuli than the general phobic population, exhibiting bradycardia rather than tachycardia and being prone to syncope. Therefore, a social phobia may also have a genetic link.

So, how can we get rid of social phobia?

In psychology, behavioral therapy is one of the most common treatments for psychological disorders, and systematic desensitization therapy is the most commonly used.

This method is mainly through a series of specific procedures to induce the situation that causes anxiety and tension in the patient, and the therapist through professional verbal techniques to make the patient feel relaxed, to achieve the purpose of eliminating anxiety and tension.

In one way, social phobics are not afraid of social interaction per se, but of insults, indifference, ridicule, etc.

Insults and indifference (unconditioned stimuli) cause anxiety and timidity (unconditioned responses), and based on unconditioned reflexes, the presentation of neutral stimuli (social) is always accompanied by subsequent insults and indifference (unconditioned stimuli).

After many repetitions, socialization thus becomes a conditioned stimulus, forming a conditioned reflex, so that just being around people can cause anxiety and other undesirable emotions.

From this perspective, social fear is due to the formation of a conditioned reflex.

Many years ago, the representative of behaviorism Watson experimented: on Little Albert an infant, the experimenter let him and the rabbits play together, and at first they played very happily. Later, whenever the rabbit was released, the experimenter heaved a large gong and made a deafening noise, and little Albert was terrified.

After associating the rabbit with the loud noise several times, little Albert was scared when he saw the rabbit, and later even generalized to be scared when he saw something with fur.

This association also exists for social fears, which are social - being insulted and ignored.

Therefore, by removing the link between the two through desensitization therapy, the social phobic can recover and be able to interact with people as normal.